Anarchy and Posthumanism Part 1: What is Anarchy?

I’m going to go right ahead and guess that for most people (at least here in the UK), anarchy is the video below. According to taste that was easy either loud and scary; scruffy and childish; or an invigorating shot of piss and vinegar. If it was the latter for you then its probable you’ll already be sympathetic to the topic of this post. For the rest, I’m going to try to attempt to appeal to your better senses and paint a picture of anarchy or more specifically, anarchism-that you hopefully won’t find as jaggy and scary. The Sex Pistols are, after all, just the public face of anarchy, but anarchy wears many faces. There are quieter, cosier forms. Anarchy doesn’t mean chaos after all, but freely chosen order. Saying that, an inkling of Pistol’s deep and thorough disrespect for authority will probably help, even if you wouldn’t express it in the same way.

Here’s the nub: even if you have perfectly legitimate intellectual objections to the notion of anarchism it would be difficult to argue with the basic moral position of anarchy. There’s no getting around this. Dismissing anarchism out of hand is effectively saying, “I think its okay for people to tell other people what to do”. Now to be fair, you wouldn’t be alone in that position, but that’s kind of the point of this post.